20. Philip Roth, The Human Stain (cont.)

The American Novel Since 1945 (ENGL 291)

In this lecture Professor Hungerford discusses how the novels we read are shaped by legal and market constraints. She traces a history of censorship from the Comstock laws, to the policing of Joyce's Ulysses and Ginsberg's Howl, and shows how changes in publishing practices have tended to penalize more unusual, less profitable books. Hungerford also touches on the canon debates of the 80s and 90s (citing John Guillory and Toni Morrison), and the issues of intellectual property and internationalization raised by digital literature. Finally, she points to some ways that Philip Roth, despite his controversial representations of Judaism and of women, succeeds in tackling fundamental human concerns.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Observing Local Bookshops: Patterns of Display and Absence
12:28 - Chapter 2. The History of Legal Censorship in the United States
23:43 - Chapter 3. New Forms of Censorship: The Influence of the Market
31:41 - Chapter 4. The Other Side of the Coin: Intellectual Property and Infinite Access in the Digital Age
35:15 - Chapter 5. Problems in Deriving the Modern Literary Canon: A Proliferation of Points of View

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Spring 2008.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• bookstore
• canon
• debates
• Comstock
• laws
• cultural
• capital
• Howl
• intellectual
• property
• internationalization
• internet
• Irving
• Howe
• market
• misogyny
• obscenity
• publisher
• Roth
• Saul
• Bellow